Through a Glass Darkly

"'I can't explain myself, I'm afraid, Sir,' said Alice,
'because I'm not myself you see.'"
-- Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (ch. V)

Behind every great man
is the man he wants to hide.
Inside every man, great or small,
resides a restless spirit, a heart dark and twisted,
pulsating with only one desire – freedom.

I did not understand the soul of man.
I read the measure of humanity through
the rosy glasses of optimism, seeing in each
the potential for nobility or for infamy,
believing that, were we given the opportunity
to choose for ourselves who we would be,
we would gravitate naturally –
scientifically –
to the righteous and the sane.

I did not know my own weakness,
could not fathom the depths of depravity cloaked beneath
the mantle of respectability I show to my fellow men.
I thought to break the chains of their hypocrisy,
risking all – my health, my reputation, my life
to prove to them the truth of my work,
that I was not 'playing god',
but rather unchaining the god within us all.

How they would laugh to see me now.
Or shudder,
turning politely aside from the wreckage
of my sanity and my dreams.
Discreetly, friends and neighbors would close their eyes,
naming this a subject not fit for conversation
amongst respectable people.

They would say, 'The good doctor is unwell',
or perhaps, 'He is not himself today',
but I grow less sure by the hour where the truth lies,
and I am ever more afraid that is exactly what I am.

Where have I been?
Who have I been?

He comes unbidden now.
'Control' is a myth in which
I no longer have the luxury to indulge.

This morning I woke again tortured by a half memory,
unsure of where I'd been;
just the teasing hint pale-tinged with blood,
the guilty taste of nightmare on my tongue,
between my teeth,
and beneath these meticulously-manicured nails.

In the glass, my face gives no sign;
it is the same placid, earnest visage that
greets the sun each morning –
the brow perhaps more lined,
the eyes more careworn;
who can guess what sights they gazed upon
in the hours I must count as lost?

These hands, skilled in the use of a surgeon's blade,
show more of a tremble on mornings like these.
How can I know, with no memory of my night,
whether the blood grimed into my knuckles was spilled
in the name of science or of lust?

My sheltered half screams out to me
that I must abhor and revile him,
must fight with every fiber, to my last breath,
to thrust him back into the comfortable darkness,
yet I cannot.
And in the deepest hours of the night,
when even the restless stars sleep,
I know that even if I could do so, I would not.
To lock him away would sever half my soul;

I can no longer separate the men who could and should be.
It is a fine line, yet still I feel that with enough care,
I may still walk it – and find some way to reconcile the man within
with the face that wears the mask, and that one day
I might wake again without the blood-rage pounding my temples
and the voices in my head,
eternally asking:

Where have I been?
Who have I been?
And when will he come again?

---
AMH
10 May 2005